When comparing pkgsrc vs ShiftIt, the Slant community recommends ShiftIt for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?”ShiftIt is ranked 47th while pkgsrc is ranked 55th. The most important reason people chose ShiftIt is:

ShiftIt is configured through a simple UI where you simply press the hotkeys you wish to map to a certain action.

Pros

Pro

pkgin is an apt-like tools for installing binaries from pkgsrc

pkgin aims to be a tool similar to apt/yum for managing pkgsrc binaries by relying on pkg_summary for installing, removing and upgrading packages and dependencies, using a remote repo.

Pro

Both binary packages and source build possible

Fast software installation is possible by using binary packages. It's also easy to build from source which allows for different compile-time options (like different UI backends) as well as gaining access to pre-release versions of software in certain cases.

Pro

Adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems

Has been adopted to be used on several Unix-like operating systems and Windows. It's also the default package manager of DragonflyBSD and of the (now discounted) Bluewall Linux distro.

Pro

Installs and works in the same way as MacPorts

Installs its own dependencies which means that it is very secure. Cannot install anything unless you use the "sudo" command which is in keeping with the Unix philosophy.

Pro

Does not need Xcode command line tools or Xcode.

This means that you can install it fresh on a new installation of MacOS and have all your favorite apps installed right from the start.

Pro

Offering tooling for backporting fixes

Backporting fixes can be done by cherry-picking updates from a newer branch (pkgsrc is released every 3 months) and creating a package. Sometimes bugs need to be fixed for production and there is neither a fix in newer pkgsrc nor the softwares upstream. So pkgsrc has tools like pkgdiff, mkpatches, etc. that help with developing patches and building binary packages from that. A bit of documentation about that process can be found here.

Easy installation if you use 3rd party scripts

Pro

Works easily with Ansible

Pro

Easy to configure

ShiftIt is configured through a simple UI where you simply press the hotkeys you wish to map to a certain action.

Pro

Intuitive

ShiftIt is very straight-forward to use for most frequent usages.

Pro

Free

Pro

Open source

Ad

Cons

Con

Relatively complicated setup and installation

Installing and setting pkgsrc up is a bit more complicated than in other package managers where it often consists in running a single script.

Con

Not so broadly used on MacOS as compared with MacPorts

You do not hear about Pkgsrc as openly as you hear the words "HomeBrew" or "MacPorts"

Con

Can't install some packages

Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail.

Con

A little slow

Similar to Spectacle, but it has a few more features, such as being able to pick the size adjustment increments. Spectacle was a little faster, though. Repeated size changes or moves in succession can cause it to wait for it to complete.

Con

Imprecise when readjusting sizes

Con

Doesn't support moving windows between workspaces

There's no way to move a window to a different workspace with hotkeys in ShiftIt.

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